Due to various types of health problems, some people are required to take multiple doses of medicine each day. Treatment of such health problems often requires close compliance with relatively complex medication regimes. It is not unusual for a person having a serious health problem to be taking four or more different prescription drugs at one time. These drugs often differ significantly in dosages, both as to time and amount, as well as in their intended physiological effects. These drugs also often differ in the severity of potentially adverse reactions due to mismedication.
Close and careful compliance with these complex medication regimes is a difficult task in itself. The difficulty is greatly enhanced, considering that the patient must discipline his/herself to follow these regimes at home, without the day-to-day support and supervision of trained medical personnel. Furthermore, a loss in short term memory can be naturally attributed to some illnesses and to the medication themselves, resulting in forgetfulness and further confusion in scheduling compliance with complicated medication regimes.
Furthermore, in order to make medication containers "child proof," many of such containers have become very difficult to open. This is especially true for older persons or persons with serious illnesses who may be too weak to open such containers.
Further still, many patients require an additional supply of pills/capsules after their initial supply is depleted. Some patients are required to take pills/capsules over very long periods of time, which may require that the patient obtain an additional supply of pills/capsules on a monthly basis. It may be crucial that a patient receive each and every dosage of a particular medication. However, some patients may not remember to obtain a new supply of pills/capsules until the previous supply is completely depleted, in which case it may be too late to obtain a new supply prior to the time that the next dosage is required to be taken.
Moreover, it may be difficult for some patients to read the somewhat fine print on traditional pill/capsule bottles. This may add to the difficulty of properly administering a regime of pills/capsules correctly. Additionally, traditional pill/capsule bottles are easily lost or misplaced.
Therefore, there exists a desire for a method and device for storing and dispensing pills/capsules. There exists a further desire for such a method and device that may provide information to a user to assist the user in administering such solid-form medications.